Dietary inflammatory index and pancreatic cancer risk: a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis

The meta-analysis was conducted to test the link between pancreatic cancer (PC) risk and dietary inflammatory index (DII®) score.

Systematic review and meta-analysis.

We searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and the Cochrane Library up to 22 November 2020 to identify the relevant studies. Studies that reported the risk estimates and the corresponding 95 % CI for the DII category and PC risk were included. The effect sizes were pooled using the random-effects model. Dose-response analysis was conducted where possible.

Two prospective cohort studies of 634 705 participants (3152 incident cases), and four case-control studies of 2737 cases and 4861 controls.

Overall, the pooled risk ratio (RR) indicated that individuals in the highest category compared with the lowest category had an increased PC risk (RR = 1·45; 95 % CI 1·11, 1·90; P = 0·006). Meanwhile, significant heterogeneity was also revealed. The dose-response meta-analysis indicated that a 1-unit increase in the DII score was associated with the PC risk (RR = 1·08; 95 % CI 1·002, 1·166; P = 0·045; I2 = 94·1 %, P < 0·001). Nonlinear result showed an increased risk of moving from fewer to more inflammatory borders with increasing DII score (Pnonlinearity = 0·003; I2 = 76·5 %, P < 0·001). Subgroup analyses found that significant positive association between PC risk and DII score appeared to be in case-control studies (RR = 1·70; 95 % CI 1·16, 2·50; P = 0·007) and studies with ≤ 31 DII components (RR = 1·76; 95 % CI 1·14, 2·72; P = 0·011).

These findings suggested dietary habits with high inflammatory features (high DII score) might increase PC risk.